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Weird Museum Tour, September 2004

Travelling buddies, Willberry & Cliff

I should thank RoadSideAmerica.com for making a rainy day a fun day™. Will and I were supposed to go on a hike, but the rain killed that plan and most anything else we could come up with. RoadSideAmerica.com gave us alternatives. RandMcNally gave me directions.

Cliffy met me in Warren, we picked up Willberry in Manchester, and headed off to our first stop in Leominster. The Plastics Museum is part of the National Plastics Center, a group dedicated to the promotion of plastic. I’m not advocating for the use of plastics, I really have no opinion on the matter, but it’s hard not to be interested or at least amused by a museum dedicated to the material. It seems Leominster and the state of Massachusetts has a long history with plastics; one of their proudest moments is the development of the pink flamingo lawn ornament in 1948.

From the Plastics Museum, we motored on to Bellingham so Cliff could go to the Bonsai exhibition. I wish there was something interesting to say about that, but I like to experience trees privately, small, potted trees especially. This was the scene of The Bellingham Accident, but that doesn’t make it worth returning to.

After some delay in Bellingham, we turned to Dedham to find the Museum of Bad Art in basement of the community theater. Occupying a 15′ by 30′ room outside the men’s bathroom and illuminated by a single fluorescent light hanging from the ceiling, it’s not the best place to view art of any kind. While the collection contains a large number of items pulled from dumpsters, it also contains a number of gift items and one or two pieces actually bought by curators.